Murray Edelman holds a unique and distinguished position in American political science. For decades one of the few serious scholars to question dominant rational-choice interpretations of politics, Edelman looked instead to the powerful influence of signs, spectacles, and symbols—of culture—on political behavior and political institutions. His first, now classic, book, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, created paths of inquiry in political science, communication studies, and sociology that are still being explored today. In this book, Edelman continues his quest to understand the influence of perception on the political process by turning to the role of art. He argues that political ideas, language, and actions cannot help but be based upon the images and narratives we take from literature, paintings, film, television, and other genres. Edelman believes art provides us with models, scenarios, narratives, and images we draw upon in order to make sense of political events, and he explores the different ways art can shape political perceptions and actions to both promote and inhibit diversity and democracy. "Elegantly written. . . . He brilliantly contends that art helps create the images from which opinion-molders and citizens construct the social realities of politics."—Choice "It is perhaps the freshness with which he puts his case that is what makes From Art to Politics, as well as his other works, so challenging and invigorating."—Philip Abbott, Review of Politics

This book offers an analysis of Paz's political thought, arguing that it is rooted in two separate and often antagonistic traditions, Liberalism and Romanticism. Grenier shows that Paz's political thought is best approached not so much by looking at the specific positions Paz took in the issues of his day, but rather by uncovering the core values at the heart of Paz's political philosophy. From Art to Politics gives not only a better understanding of Paz's thought, but also a discussion of the political culture and democratization of Mexico. The book takes a novel look at issues such as the relations between art and politics, the role of intellectuals, and the penchant of academics for "machination" theories in the area of art and culture. The result is an account of Paz's work that is both more focused and more ambitious than those offered in previous books on Paz's politics.

This book explores the current interrelationship between art, activism, and politics. It presents new visual concepts and commentaries that are being used to represent and communicate emotionally charged topics, thereby bringing them onto local political and social agendas in a way far more powerful than words alone. It looks at how art is not only reflecting and setting agendas, but also how it is influencing political reaction. Consequently, Art & Agenda is not only a perceptive documentation of current urban interventions, installations, performances, sculptures, and paintings by more than 100 young and established artists, but also points to future forms of political discourse.

The symbolic manifestations, purposes, and uses of politics are revealed in this provocative analysis of the institution of politics and man as a political animal. Unlike the conventional study of politics that deals with how people get the things they want through government, this book concentrates on how politics influence what they want, what they fear, and what they regard as possible. In examining politics as a symbolic form, it looks at man and politics as reflections of each other. -- Publisher description from http://www.press.uillinois.edu (Oct. 7, 2011).

It is common to hear talk of how music can inspire crowds, move individuals and mobilise movements. We know too of how governments can live in fear of its effects, censor its sounds and imprison its creators. At the same time, there are other governments that use music for propaganda or for torture. All of these examples speak to the idea of music's political importance. But while we may share these assumptions about music's power, we rarely stop to analyse what it is about organised sound - about notes and rhythms - that has the effects attributed to it. This is the first book to examine systematically music's political power. It shows how music has been at the heart of accounts of political order, at how musicians from Bono to Lily Allen have claimed to speak for peoples and political causes. It looks too at the emergence of music as an object of public policy, whether in the classroom or in the copyright courts, whether as focus of national pride or employment opportunities. The book brings together a vast array of ideas about music's political significance (from Aristotle to Rousseau, from Adorno to Deleuze) and new empirical data to tell a story of the extraordinary potency of music across time and space. At the heart of the book lies the argument that music and politics are inseparably linked, and that each animates the other.

Contemporary art is increasingly concerned with swaying the opinions of its viewer. To do so, the art employs various strategies to convey a political message. This book provides readers with the tools to decode and appreciate political art, a crucial and understudied direction in post-war art. From the postwar works of Pablo Picasso and Alexander Deineka to the Border Film Project and web-based works of Beatriz da Costa, Art and Politics: a Small History of Art for Social Change since 1945 considers how artists visual or otherwise have engaged with major political and grassroots movements, particularly after 1960. With its broad definition of the political, this book features chapters on post colonialism, feminism, the anti-war movement, environmentalism, gay rights and anti-globalization. It charts how individual artworks reverberated with enormous ideological shifts. While emphasizing the West, Art and Politics takes global developments into account as well - looking at art production practiced by postcolonial African, Latin American and Middle Eastern artists. Its case-study approach to the subject provides the reader with an overview of a most complex subject. This book will also challenge its readers to consider often devalued and marginalized political artworks as properly part of the history of modern and contemporary art.

Political Language: Words That Succeed and Policies That Fail deals with chronic inequalities of a smaller portion of the population getting more. The book discusses the persistence of poverty and greater inequalities in a democratic society such as the United States. The text reviews the chronic problems and the various beliefs found in American society, and also notes the general acceptance of the large differences in the quality of life of the people, which includes political power and autonomy. The book then defines perception of the political spectator and explains the linguistic generation of assumptions (taking for granted), linguistic reconstruction of facts (cover-ups), and the linguistic segmentation of politics (distinct from ordinary world). The text then emphasizes the language of inquiry, of authority, of participation, and of resistance as leading to free inquiry and experimentation or political loyalty. The selection can prove beneficial for political students, economists, educators, sociologists, and members of ministerial affairs related to population and economics.

A major issue in the relation of art to the rest of society is the question of how art penetrates politics. From the perspective of most art scholars, this is a question of aesthetics—whether politics necessarily pollutes and debases the quality of the arts. From the perspective of social science, it has been primarily a question of meaning—how political messages are conveyed through artistic media. Recent work has begun to broaden the study of the arts and politics beyond semiosis and content focus. Several strands of scholarship are converging around the general issue of the social relationships within which art takes political form, that is, how art and artists do politics. This perspective of "doing" moves analysis beyond addressing the meaning of culture, to focus on the ways that art is embedded in—and intervenes in—social relationships, activities, and institutions. This volume brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from France and the United States to investigate these directions and themes by exploring the question of "how to do politics with art" from a comparative standpoint, putting sociological approaches in conversation with other disciplinary prisms. It will be of interest to scholars of social movements and politicization, the sociology of art, art history, and aesthetics.

Monuments, memorials, sculptures, and murals in public places often are discussed solely in terms of monetary worth or political implications rather than as complex cultural achievements. In this groundbreaking anthology, 22 artists, architects, historians, critics, curators, and philosophers explore the role of public art in creating national identity. 38 photos.

This book explores the politics of artistic creativity, examining how black artists in Africa and the diaspora create art as a procedure of self-making. Essays cross continents to uncover the efflorescence of black culture in national and global contexts and in literature, film, performance, music, and visual art. Contributors place the concerns of black artists and their works within national and transnational conversations on anti-black racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, migration, resettlement, resistance, and transnational feminisms. Does art by the subaltern fulfill the liberatory potential that critics have ascribed to it? What other possibilities does political art offer? Together, these essays sort through the aesthetics of daily life to build a thesis that reflects the desire of black artists and cultures to remake themselves and their world.

Art & Politics Now is a richly illustrated survey of more than 200 artists whose works address the political, often using radical approaches and techniques to communicate their ideas. Since the turn of the 21st century, contemporary artists have increasingly engaged with some of the most pressing issues facing our world and their art has taken a distinctly political turn. Eleven themed chapters with integrated illustrations each provide a closely woven argument about the contribution of specific artworks and projects to different aspects of political and social engagement, from globalization and citizenship to activism and the environment.

Americans agree about government arts funding in the way the women in the old joke agree about the food at the wedding: it's terrible--and such small portions! Americans typically either want to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts, or they believe that public arts funding should be dramatically increased because the arts cannot survive in the free market. It would take a lover of the arts who is also a libertarian economist to bridge such a gap. Enter Tyler Cowen. In this book he argues why the U.S. way of funding the arts, while largely indirect, results not in the terrible and the small but in Good and Plenty--and how it could result in even more and better. Few would deny that America produces and consumes art of a quantity and quality comparable to that of any country. But is this despite or because of America's meager direct funding of the arts relative to European countries? Overturning the conventional wisdom of this question, Cowen argues that American art thrives through an ingenious combination of small direct subsidies and immense indirect subsidies such as copyright law and tax policies that encourage nonprofits and charitable giving. This decentralized and even somewhat accidental--but decidedly not laissez-faire--system results in arts that are arguably more creative, diverse, abundant, and politically unencumbered than that of Europe. Bringing serious attention to the neglected issue of the American way of funding the arts, Good and Plenty is essential reading for anyone concerned about the arts or their funding.

Thanks to the ready availability of political news today, informed citizens can protect and promote their own interests and the public interest more effectively. Or can they? Murray Edelman argues against this conventional interpretation of politics, one that takes for granted that we live in a world of facts and that people react rationally to the facts they know. In doing so, he explores in detail the ways in which the conspicuous aspects of the political scene are interpretations that systematically buttress established inequalities and interpretations already dominant political ideologies.

Considers how presidential leadership depends on its ability to gain the support or acquiescence of key constituencies outside government. Discusses both historical and current relationships, including the presidency and political parties, the presidency and mass media, the presidency and the public, and the presidency and interest groups.

The book samples the richness of the cultural discourse in the United States, Weimar Germany, and the Soviet Union and suggests the need for a decentered media history that relies on the process of articulation in society.